— Just like the politicians say, education is very important to Fall River. Without an education, how will our children get good jobs when they grow up and move away?

— Here’s the message, Somerset: Most towns don’t have two huge power plants propping up their tax base and they do just fine.

— Here’s the message, wannabe gangsta: If you’re buying that expensive cognac that all the rappers drink, but you’re buying the half pint and you’re paying for it with change, maybe you’re kinda small time.

— Mayor Will Flanagan says he can impose pay-as-you-throw without a City Council vote. That’s good because I think everyone is sick off all this democracy stuff.

— I like the idea of the AHA! program coming to Fall River. In New Bedford, it created well-attended arts events downtown. I’d go to those kind of events and so would other people. No, I don’t think it’ll “save Fall River.” I just think it would be nice for the people who live here.

And maybe that’s the message, to stop thinking that everything has to “save Fall River,” or make the city a tourist destination. Let’s try to do moderate-sized things to make life better for the people who live here now.

There’s a lot of cheap talk about “nurturing art” in Fall River. I’ve got locally produced artwork on my walls at home. My wife, Deborah, wears jewelry she bought from local artists.

— Cinderella Bakery, North Main Street, makes one hell of a raisin bread. I’ve been to “artisan” bakeries that didn’t make anything half as good. They put a little frosting on the raisin bread, too.

— Pieces of the language: “Okey dokey” has disappeared from the list of things we say.

— For my readers who speak rap, in the budget debate, the City Council is basic. The mayor is ratchet.

I sometimes use rap or rap references in this column because I believe that, in a city where rap music provides much of life’s sound track, a writer is obligated to listen.

I have friends, mostly white guys my age, who proudly say of rap music, “I don’t know anything about that kind of music.” When I hear that, I say to myself, “Great, let’s make a list of all the stuff you don’t know anything about.”

— Massachusetts is considering an increase in the state’s minimum wage. Whenever I think of this, I remember the people who only get a raise when the minimum wage increases.

Page 2 of 2 - — The Cherry & Webb building is the downtown version of that one tenement house on your block where somebody’s always either moving in or moving out.

— Politics and sport metaphors. No more. Please. You’re not playing high school football and you’re not part of a “team.” Talk like a serious adult.

— Fall River does not have a “budget crisis.” Fall River has an ongoing collision of wiped-out manufacturing jobs, leadership that looks to the past, increased poverty and population loss.

— Talking (and writing) endlessly about the personalities of elected officials doesn’t get near to the root of the problems, some of which go back nearly a century. It might be interesting talk and it might be good writing but the problems are bigger than the people in power.

— Fall River needs a redesign, top to bottom, attitudes, jobs, paychecks, schools, hiring procedures, how people campaign, all of it, and it’s not going to happen.

Fall River’s government is a white-haired guy on a street corner, holding a sign for “his” candidate, just like they did it in 1950.